The Holidays Begin

Well I guess its officially the holiday season now, however if it weren't for the decorating crews here at the resort putting up Christmas trees and lights, I probably wouldn't know it because its still in the 80's and humid with no forecast of change, haha. The weather reporters have it pretty easy here.."hot and sunny with a chance of wind and rain" haha. I'm not complaining though, I love it here. I mean yes I am going to miss snowboarding and the cabin trips up to Big Bear, but by far I will be missing all of you the most. I have met some friends out here that are cool, but theres no one like you guys back home.
Anyyyywayyysss, so Thanksgiving was last week, and everyone here at dorm.. (I'm gonna refer to my living quarters, which is the first 3 floors of a massive 32 story tower, as the dorm because its where all the employees like myself reside and it reminds me of a college dorm, haha).. So we all came together and each made a dish or brought a drink or pitched in money so that we could have our own little version of Thanksgiving. It turned out quite well as far as attendance and really different as far as what was brought. We have all sorts of people here in the dorm; Korean, Mexican, Japanese, Russian, Taiwanese and American so the dishes brought were literally from around the world, and boy were they good. There were "Korean Pancakes, bbq short ribs, mash potatoes, quesadillas, Vegan salads, couscous. Truly a cornucopia of foods and flavor that were to die for.
After overindulging ourselves with all of the tastiness that was brought, we danced and ran down to the beach for a bonfire until all hours of the night. We even sent fire kites, which is a candle underneath a paper bag like structure, into the night sky and watched them float off into the distance. Definitely one of the most different Thanksgivings I have lived, but certainly one to remember.
So training finally finished, and I am officially official to work all areas here at PIC. This is exciting because I am leading my own expeditions without help or a "shadow". I am having tons of fun with it. The guests hardly speak any English, so really everything I say I get to charade it or try and communicate in some way to make them understand. Kind of hard at first, but its sort of like an art that I am trying to perfect, haha. Windsurfing was an adventure. I had a windsurfing group that went alllll over the place. I swear the wind was just messing with us just for fun. I had guests blowing all sorts of directions, but they still had huge grins on their faces and seemed to be enjoying themselves, so I considered it a success, and I guess so did my boss since one of the guests commented on how much fun they had to him. Gold star!
So on my day off this week I wasn't really planning on doing anything, but of course you can't just do nothing here and so I ended up meeting up with some other employees that had the day off and we drove to this hike that led down to this hidden bay. It was awesome. We hiked 45 minutes through dense jungle, brush, mud, stuff I've never seen before and absolutely loved it. I saw all kinds of exotic birds, bugs, reptiles, and when we finally made it to the beach, we stepped foot in the sand and saw an amazing outlet where a fresh water creek ran right into the ocean. There were scary looking eels, and when I stood still the sand seemed to be moving right beneath me because of the multitude of hermit crabs that were scurrying about. Of course after exploring a bit, it was time to crack open a coconut and just relax. That's the best part of long hikes right? Especially when you're watching nature at its finest. After the hike we made the long trek back, enjoyed some local foods and called it a day.
Can't wait to see what adventures this next week brings!

Love and miss you all..